


The Spring in His Step

by akane42me



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akane42me/pseuds/akane42me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An experiment has gone wrong.  Or maybe not...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Spring in His Step

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Avery11 for the 2013 MFUWSS Easter Egg challenge.

**The Spring in His Step**  
  
Owing to its paucity and mousy hue, Donald Simpson’s hair remained unnoticed in spite of a month’s holiday from the barber, until the day he arrived at work sporting a dye job.  
  
Rather than creating a younger look, the startling dark brown color called attention to the man’s thinning hair, and worse, the flake-plagued scalp from which the failing crop struggled to grow.  
  
That was the least of it, Waverly saw, as he paused in the doorway of the lab, studying Simpson as he went about his business, navigating the laboratory’s obstacle course of tables and scientific equipment.  
  
Normally, Dr Donald Simpson, Head of Section Eight Research and Development, wore the same dingy white shirt, stained tie, and shiny-kneed trousers for days at a time, scuttling about absentmindedly, fluttering through the halls, the tails of his lab coat flapping about him like the wings of a drunken seagull.  
  
But today the man wore a new getup:  a periwinkle shirt, green paisley vest, and trousers whose belled bottoms covered his shoes.  
  
Miss Rogers had drawn Waverly aside that afternoon.  Some sort of ruckus this past week about Simpson, whom she’d just seen in the elevator.  
  
“You’ll understand when you see him.  Speak to him, won’t you sir?  Man to man?”  She’d adamantly refused to go into details.  
  
So it was that Waverly, at ten o’clock on a Friday evening, found himself examining Simpson before confronting him, in the hope of gaining some insight into whatever Miss Rogers wanted him to speak to the fellow about.  
  
The unfortunate state of Simpson’s appearance, Waverly thought, must lie at the root of Miss Rogers’ oblique request.  But there was something else about the man, something different, unrelated to attire or hair.  At first, Waverly couldn't put his finger on it, but after a while, he realized that Simpson carried himself with an air of uncharacteristic buoyancy.  
  
Waverly stepped into the laboratory.  
  
“Mr. Waverly!”  Simpson bustled over to his boss.  “What brings you here, sir?”  
  
“It’s something of a personal nature, at Miss Rogers’ behest.”  
  
Simpson turned pink.  
  
“Miss Rogers?  Oh, no.”  He hastily buttoned his lab coat, effectively covering the offending shirt and vest.  
  
“Don’t bother trying to conceal it, Simpson.  I've seen it.”  
  
Simpson’s pink face turned crimson.  He sputtered, “I’m so sorry, sir.”   
  
“We can’t have you going about like this,” Waverly said.  “Unprofessional.”  
  
Simpson looked up, startled, and said, “Unprofessional?”  
  
 “An embarrassment.  Leave it to the young people.  And there’s the matter of your hair.”  
  
“My hair?”  Simpson lifted a protective hand to his skull.  
  
 “More infantile than youthful, I’d say.”  
  
“My hair.”  Simpson looked perplexed.  
  
At Simpson’s expression, Waverly felt a moment of pity, but immediately tossed it aside.  The man was an invaluable asset to UNCLE, and as a sign of goodwill, Waverly generally tolerated his mad-scientist oddities.  However, the outlandish hair and bizarre clothing were unacceptable.  He remembered the clownish flare of Simpson’s trousers, and, with a disapproving shake of his head, pointed at them.  
  
“And there’s the worst of it.  Your laboratory coat hasn't a chance of covering –”  
  
“I know,” said Simpson dejectedly, as he pulled at his lab coat.  “I pretty well figured that’s why you’re here.”  He cleared his throat embarrassedly.  
  
“It’s actually a bit funny, if you think about it,” he said, and produced a half-hearted chuckle which he immediately squelched at Waverly’s frown.  “Yes. Well. Here’s the thing.  I, ah, as you may know, well, of course you know, you always – you see,  I’ve been working on preservation techniques,  portable applications in particular, solutions for inclusion in the field kits, for extending the viability of vegetables in the meal packets, and I, well, in the interest of – you, see, it seemed like a – and so, I sampled them myself, and yes, yes, I fully acknowledge that I should leave that to the monkeys, but there it is, I’ve admitted it, and …”  
  
Simpson had turned an invisible page and was blathering about his research.  Goodwill was all well and good, but Waverly knew from painful experience, if he didn’t take immediate action, the man would never shut up.  He glanced at his watch.  
  
“Well then.  Very good.  Glad that’s settled.”  Waverly turned to leave, then added, “Back to your usual attire tomorrow, there’s a good fellow.”  
  
Simpson’s barefaced surprise stopped Waverly in his tracks.  He stood, rooted in the doorway, and watched an evolution of expressions parade across Simpson’s face.  Uncertainty.  Suspicion.  Dawning realization.  
  
“Miss Rogers didn’t tell you, did she,” said Simpson.  
  
“Not in so many words, no,” replied Waverly.  “Said it was a matter best handled man to man.  Rather kind of her to be thinking of you.  Spare you further embarrassment.”  
  
 For some befuddling reason, Waverly’s placating words only increased Simpson’s discomfiture.  
  
 “You don’t know.”  
  
“Whatever are you going on about?” asked Waverly.  
  
“What did she say she saw?”  Simpson’s thick-tongued delivery came out as s _heshaysheshaw._  
  
Something sharp stabbed at Waverly’s right temple.  He massaged the soft place next to his eyebrow. As if from a distance, Simpson’s voice pattered on.  
  
“…side effect, really – it’s all an unexpected result…”  
  
“What Miss Rogers saw,” said Waverly, struggling for clarity.  
  
“…gone terribly wrong, well, not really all that terrible, I suppose, but it was …”  
  
Waverly lost his patience.  “Simpson, out with it!”  
  
More regrettable words were never spoken.  
  
Reluctantly, Simpson unbuttoned his laboratory coat.  
  
Waverly nearly choked on his tongue.  
  
“Water… I need  ... water,” he coughed.  
  
“It’s in the refrigerator!  I’ll get it for you!”  
  
Waverly waved Simpson off and wheezed, “No! You – stay where you are!”   
  
He hurried to the refrigerator, flung the door open, and seized one of two conical flasks from the top shelf.  Tipping its cylindrical neck to his mouth, he gulped a lengthy draught.  So damnably awkward, having to drink out of the thing.  He grimaced at the refrigerated taste of the stuff, more bitter than one would expect, he thought, and turned back to Simpson with a half-formed complaint, but was rendered speechless by the look of horror on Simpson’s face.  
  
Simpson, agog, was pointing to the other flask, which Waverly saw, as he turned back to the refrigerator and read through the glass, was labeled ‘H2O’ on the back side.  He looked at the flask in his hand.  It was unlabeled.  Simpson was sputtering again.  
  
“The experimental – you took the wrong –”  
  
Simpson ran to Waverly and tore the flask from Waverly’s grasp.  Waverly understood in a click.  The experiment.  The side effect.  What Miss Rogers saw.  
  
“Get the antidote!”  Waverly demanded.  “Come with me immediately, to Medical!”  
  
“…ty four hours!” came Simpson’s muffled cry, his head in the refrigerator, as he returned the potion to the shelf.  
  
“And give me the damned water, Simpson!  Surely it will dilute –”  Waverly halted.  “What did you say?  What about twenty four hours?”  
  
Simpson shrunk against the refrigerator door.  “It takes twenty four hours to wear off.”  
  
“Are you telling me there is no antidote?”  
  
“Twenty four hours  _is_  the antidote,” Simpson said.  “There’s no other antidote.  No, don’t look so alarmed, it’s not a constant – oh, that would be painful, wouldn’t you think?  No, no, it comes and goes, you see, with thoughts of sehhh, sehhh –”  Simpson stuttered, then recovered.  “It‘s harmless!  I assure you, sir!  It merely heightens one’s –”  
  
“I can see what it heightens, you dunderhead!  Miss Rogers alluded to something about you, going on for a week!  If it only lasts twenty four hours, then why has your condition persisted?”  
  
Simpson made a mewling noise and rubbed at his neck, at one of several purplish bruises which, Waverly realized, had been hidden under Simpson’s collar.  Love bites.  
  
“What have you done,” said Waverly, slowly.  
  
Simpson gave Waverly a beseeching look and blushed anew.  
  
“It’s my wife – she, we, I –”  Simpson turned redder.  “I’ve been –”   He heaved a sigh and sat at a lab table, where he buried his head in his arms.  “Taking it.”  
  
“Have you lost your mind?” Waverly thundered.  “Straighten up, man.  Explain yourself.  At once.”  
  
Simpson lifted his head.  “It’s just so vexing, sir.  A man turns fifty, and poof!  He wakes up one morning and it hits him – he’s got less in front of him than behind him, no getting around it, and where did the time go?  And to make matters worse, you want to know what my wife did last week?”  
  
Waverly did not, but Simpson continued, the question evidently intended to be rhetorical in nature.  
  
“She called me a fuddy-duddy!” Simpson blurted.  “So I look in the mirror, and what do I see?  I  _see_  a fuddy-duddy!  And I think, before I know it, I’m going to be as old as – as, well,  _you_ , for example!  Before I  _know_  it, I’ll be –”  
  
Waverly cleared his throat.  
  
“Oh – sorry sir.  You’re not really  _that_  old, you’ve probably got a good thirty – well, maybe not  _that_ long, let’s see, seventy – hmm, plus, ahh, plus, hmm – that’d put you at – at …”  Simpson broke off and considered his boss doubtfully.  “No offense, sir.”  
  
“None taken,” allowed Waverly gruffly, although the word fuddy-duddy did stick in his pipe stem.  
  
“It’s like sliding down a long pole,” Simpson was saying.  “Into a big black hole, isn’t it, sir?  A pole with big, nasty slivers, and you’re going against the grain, it’s a big pain in the –”  
  
Waverly raised a hand.  “Enough.”  
  
“It’s been vexing me, sir.  It  _is_  vexing, isn’t it?  So, you see, at first, I thought it was a fluke, but when I realized it was the side effect of the preservative solution, I – please, sir.  Surely you understand.”  Simpson left off and laid his head back down.  
  
“I do,” replied Waverly.  “But  _you_  must understand.  I can’t have you sailing around headquarters at full mast.  You must stop ingesting it, immediately.”  
  
An appalling thought came to Waverly.  He imagined the field agents getting hold of the substance.  It was already a herculean task, convincing them to keep their guns, so to speak, holstered.  If Simpson’s preservative got into the field kits –  
  
Waverly grabbed Simpson by the arm.  “No more arguments, man.  This concoction of yours can’t get out, not a drop, not even a whiff.  Put the blasted stuff in a container with a tight seal and take it to Medical’s secured storage.  Now.”  
  
Simpson got up and followed Waverly’s orders silently, looking glum.  Too glum, for Waverly’s peace of mind.  
  
“On second thought, give it to me, so you can’t change your mind.  I’ll take it to Medical myself,” he told Simpson.  “As for you – get on with your work.  You have better things to do than bungle about in a clichéd mid-life crisis.”  
  
Container in hand, Waverly retreated to the door.  As it slid open, he fired a final volley into the laboratory.  “Confound it, Simpson, why can’t you have a water cooler like everyone else?   And button your blasted laboratory coat.”  
  
 - - - -  
  
  
  
 _They’d opened the window to let in the misty false dawn, the breeze, the bird song from among the sweet, white flowers in the chestnuts along the boulevard.   Paris, 1958._  
  
On Monday morning, Waverly sat at his desk and thought of that morning, long ago.  
  
He opened his briefcase and removed from its safekeeping the container of Simpson’s concoction, bound for UNCLE’s secured Medical storage facility.  
  
Lucky, indeed, he thought, that it had been a Friday evening.  
  
He burped lightly, the after effect of the four rashers of bacon his wife had cooked for him that morning – a rare treat.  On Sunday morning, it had been a Belgian waffle with strawberries and clotted cream, an even rarer occurrence.  On Saturday, there’d been no breakfast.  They’d slept in – something a Waverly simply didn’t do.  But sleep in they did.  
  
She hadn’t smiled like that since 1958.  
  
  
 **The End**


End file.
